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The administrators of collapsed Australian underground coal mining contractor Delta SBD have launched an urgent sale process with a call for expressions of interests in the business, its assets or a recapitalisation.Delta appointed voluntary administrators John McInerney and Said Jahani of Grant Thornton last week after a long battle against the decline of the coal industry. Its major clients included South32's Appin mine, Wollongong Coal and Peabody Coal.The administrators have set a June 16 deadline for responses to the sale call.

The exploration alliance between international miner South32 and AusQuest has added a sixth project, the Cerro de Fierro iron-oxide copper-gold prospect in southern Peru, to its basket of exploration opportunities. Under the alliance established in Feb 2017, South32 will fund an initial $US1.5M of exploration on the 3 projects in Peru and 3 in Western Australia.Drill target definition work is expected to start at Cerro de Fierro, about 30km from Chala on the coastal belt of SW Peru in July-Aug.

S32 has suspended production at the Appin Area 7 and 9 longwalls at its Illawarra Metallurgical Coal operations in Australia following the discovery of elevated gas concentrations at Area 7 on May 7.The company warned production for the year to June 2017 in the NSW Southern Coalfields operations would be at least 10% below its prior guidance of 7.9Mt.The project remains under a prohibition notice while investigations into the incident are completed.

Global diversified miner South32 is buying a 15% stake in explorer/developer Arizona Mining and its flagship $1.26B after-tax NPV Hermosa-Taylor zinc-lead-silver project in Arizona, US, for $C110.3M.South32 has signed a binding private placement agreement for 45M Arizona shares at $2.45ps to add drill rigs and fully test high priority targets to advance the Taylor deposit to feasibility/permitting. South32 can also nominate a director to the Arizona board.

International miner South32 has warned of more potential production cutbacks at its Cannington silver-lead-zinc project in Queensland, Australia on top of the near-20% cut in FY17 guidance after an underground fire damaged the load-out and shaft haulage infrastructure early this month.Away from the fire-affected areas, S32 says advancing deformation may make Cannington's underground crusher inoperable before a new unit can be commissioned in March 2018. Production would be further reduced by trucking capacity on the decline.

South32 has dumped its proposed $200M acquisition of Peabody Energy metallurgical coal assets in New South Wales rather than accede to Australian watchdog conditions it said would compromise the value of the deal.

Pressure from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has killed South32's planned acquisition of the Metropolitan colliery in the Illawarra region of NSW and a 1/6th share of the Port Kembla coal terminal from Peabody Energy.S32 announced the $US200M acquisition last Nov, but says it's not prepared to make significant concessions to Australian steelmakers to meet ACCC concerns that the deal would lessen competition. CEO Graham Kerr says the concessions would have compromised the merits of the deal.

Australian miner South32 says an underground fire at its Cannington silver-lead-zinc mine in Queensland, will cut output forecasts.The fire has damaged the load-out and shaft haulage infrastructure, with remedial work over 4-weeks expected to delay extraction of the higher grade silver and lead, cutting FY17 lead by 28,000t to 135,000t, zinc by 10,000t to 70,000t and silver by 2.55Moz to 16.5Moz.

West Australian explorer Focus is planning substantial exploration at the historic Lancefield gold project near Laverton after South32 agreed to revise a royalty agreement inherited by both companies from their antecedents. Focus says WMC and Metex Resources set a royalty structure in 1995 based on mined tonnages and calculated against then-current spot prices.